


like you touch nobody

by DivineProjectZero



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alpha!Eliot, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M, Omega!Quinn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:54:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25628560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineProjectZero/pseuds/DivineProjectZero
Summary: But fuck, that means Eliot just punched out an omega. Which, to be fair, was completely deserved, but now this guy is on the ground, ribs broken, completely unconscious. Defenseless.Shit. Eliot can’t leave him like this.
Relationships: Mr. Quinn/Eliot Spencer (Leverage)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 185





	like you touch nobody

**Author's Note:**

> Self-betaed. All mistakes are mine. Constructive feedback is always welcome.
> 
> I've never written A/B/O fic before but this happened anyway. I blame Avian for incepting me with this. 
> 
> All science and biology in this fic is vague as fuck. I've taken only the parts of omegaverse that I like and slammed them in here. Just roll with it, please.
> 
> Title from "Kiss and Make Up" by Dua Lipa and Blackpink.

Eliot doesn’t realize it until he’s already knocked the other guy out. He’s putting the earbud in, telling Nate that the whole con’s been blown, when something deep in his gut makes his feet stop moving. He hears Sterling at the other end of the comms and growls a perfunctory answer, ready to go find the smug bastard and kick his teeth in, but then Nate is telling him to stand down, to lay low. So Eliot takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself, when he sniffs the faint scent of citrus clinging to him. 

He takes another deep breath and yes, that’s definitely not just a cologne. That’s the scent of pheromones. The scent of an omega.

There’s only one person who could’ve left that scent on him just now.

Eliot turns to stare at the guy Sterling hired, still knocked out cold on the floor. Then, very carefully, he approaches and crouches down. It’s not obvious, from this distance, but when he grabs the guy’s arm and lifts it to his nose and takes a sniff of a bare wrist, the scent hits him like a kick to the gut. Citrus and cedarwood, heady and intoxicating in a way that has Eliot wondering how the fuck he missed this earlier.

Probably because he was getting his ribs broken. 

But fuck, that means Eliot just punched out an omega. Which, to be fair, was completely deserved, but now this guy is on the ground, ribs broken, completely unconscious. Defenseless. 

Shit. Eliot can’t leave him like this.

It’s stupid, he knows. The bias that omegas are weak is complete bullshit. They can take care of themselves just fine. But alpha instincts are a bitch and they’re protective as hell. Which is fine when it comes to that feeling of defending what is his own, like the team, but the protectiveness extending to random omegas isn’t helpful at all. This guy is a professional hitter; he doesn’t need Eliot’s help. The guy probably wouldn’t even want it. Having the target you were supposed to take down kick your ass then help you? That would put a dent in any decent hitter’s pride.

Eliot stands up. Walks away.

He doesn’t make even fifteen seconds.

“Fuck,” he mutters as he gently rolls the guy over onto his back. His hair is very curly, and he looks several years younger than Eliot. His scent is muted, barely noticeable from this distance; he must be using scent blockers, albeit shitty ones, if Eliot can still smell him.

He still smells amazing. Eliot wants to bottle the scent and use it as a detergent.

Jesus, he must be losing his mind. He hasn’t been in close contact with an omega in a while; they make up only 14 percent of the population, as opposed to the 27 percent that alphas take up. That’s the only explanation for why he’s acting like this. 

“Why couldn’t I have been a beta like the rest of the team,” he mutters under his breath, and starts dragging the guy out of the hangar.

-

When Quinn wakes up, he’s laying down in the backseat of a car. And one of his hands is cuffed to the door handle.

“What the fuck?” He tries to sit up, only to feel a sharp pain lance through him. Right, broken ribs. HIs cheekbone hurts like a motherfucker, too. Because Eliot Spencer punched him. Quinn hasn’t been so thoroughly knocked out like that in a while. He really should have just kicked Spencer while he was down, not giving him the chance to get back on his feet. 

Just as he’s acclimatizing to the pain and gingerly pulling himself up, closer to the door where he’d handcuffed, he realizes the whole car smells like an alpha. 

Shit. 

His pockets have been emptied and both of his guns are gone, too. His emergency knife that he usually keeps strapped to his thigh, which he can access through the false pocket of his pants, isn’t there, either. Which means whoever took his weapons patted Quinn down pretty thoroughly. That wouldn’t normally bother him, but right now he’s unarmed, injured, and handcuffed in a car that is full of an unfamiliar alpha’s scent, so he’s downright _pissed_. 

Quinn looks out the windows and realizes that they’re in public. Not that far from downtown. And somebody is approaching, already two feet away from the door diagonal from where Quinn’s sitting, and then Eliot Spencer is opening the door and sliding into the driver’s seat.

“You’re awake,” Spencer observes, his tone entirely neutral, and Quinn feels every muscle in his body tense up. It’s obvious that this car belongs to Spencer. That means Quinn is currently handcuffed in a car that belongs to an alpha he probably pissed off. Which, to be honest, is something that has happened to Quinn before. But not with someone who could actually take him in a fight. Not with someone like Spencer.

“And you’re taking me on the world’s kinkiest date, I presume.” Quinn keeps his breathing steady, angling his body so that he’s facing Spencer fully. It’s possible that he doesn’t know about Quinn. This could just be Spencer’s way of dealing with enemies, regardless of their biology. “Where are we headed? Bottom of the LA River?”

Spencer rolls his eyes. “Relax, I’m not going to kill you.”

“Right, because why else would you bring an unconscious guy into your car and handcuff him?” It doesn’t seem like an attempt to use him as a negotiating chip or to interrogate him, which doesn’t leave a lot of good options.

Spencer hesitates, then answers slowly, “You’re an omega.”

Fuck. That’s possibly the worst answer Quinn was expecting. He’s always been careful to keep that part of himself under wraps with a strict regimen of scent blockers and heat suppressants. Not because he was particularly ashamed of it, but because it could complicate things, and he’s never been a fan of complications. And this situation is a hell of a complication.

“I don’t put out on the first date,” Quinn says. He’s aiming for relaxed sarcasm, but the pain in his side and the overwhelming scent gets on his nerves, turning his words a little testy.

A muscle at Spencer’s jaw twitches. “That’s not what this is about. I’m taking you to the hospital.”

Quinn blinks at him. It’s only then that he inhales and parses through Spencer’s scent. There’s no bitter tang of anger or even a tinge of arousal. In fact, as saturated as the car is with Spencer’s scent, Spencer himself seems to be making a conscious effort to hold it back. To seem less like a threat. 

Spencer isn’t interested in hurting him, or even forcing him into bed.

“Are you actually trying to take care of me?” Quinn asks, and the way Spencer exhales through his teeth and looks away screams _yes_. “Because I’m an omega?” Something hot and sharp tears through Quinn’s chest, leaving a scorch mark on his pride, turning his voice into a snarl. “You don’t have to coddle me just because of—I’m not fucking helpless.”

“I couldn’t just walk away!” Spencer snaps, sounding frustrated and furious, like he doesn’t want to be doing this either. “And I ain’t coddling _shit_. You broke my ribs, asshole.”

Quinn bares his teeth in a mockery of a smile. “Bet I gave you a concussion, too.”

“Fuck off.” The hard edge in Spencer’s voice bleeds away. “If you don’t want a hospital, or anywhere else, you can get out now. I don’t care.”

There’s really no other option if Quinn wants to salvage his ego at all. “Here is good.”

Spencer tosses him the key to his cuffs without even looking at him. By the time Quinn’s freed his wrist, he’s managed to pull out Quinn’s weapons from the glovebox, depositing them on the back seat for Quinn to grab.

“Just so you know,” Spencer says after Quinn’s tucked his weapons away and placed one hand on the door handle, “you need better scent blockers.”

Quinn pauses. His scent blockers are the best that money can buy, and there’s no way Spencer should be able to smell him unless he’s literally got his nose against Quinn’s scent glands. There were at least two alphas on Sterling’s security team today and none of them had so much as blinked when he brushed by them earlier, so he knows they’re working. And there’s no way they’ve already worn off, either.

He’s tempted to stay and interrogate Spencer for more information about this, but his pride demands that he get out of here, so he says, “And you need to stay out of my business.”

Then he gets out of the car and slams the door behind him.

-

Three years since Eliot got his ass kicked in an airport hangar, he goes to Kiev and finds Quinn in handcuffs, confronted by seven Ukrainians. There’s only one alpha in the group, and he’s standing farthest from Quinn, right next to Eliot’s left side. Considering that gangsters tend to love weaponizing pheromones, the fact that they’re not using this guy to intimidate Quinn shows that they really have no clue about him. 

He nods at the other hitter in greeting. “Quinn.”

“Eliot Spencer.” Quinn smiles, amicable in a way that suggests that he might have mellowed out a little since their last meeting. It’s a good look on him.

“I know you said I should stay out of your business,” Eliot says with a wry grin, “but I kinda need to do some business with you.”

Quinn’s smile turns sly. “What terms did you have in mind?”

They discuss the terms, knocking out six of the Ukrainians while they’re at it, then shake on the deal while Quinn’s still in handcuffs. It’s only when they’re standing in close proximity again that Eliot catches a faint whiff of citrus. It catches him off-guard, just for a moment, but then Quinn is saying that he needs the key to his handcuffs, and Eliot refocuses and narrows his eyes at the remaining Ukrainian. 

They get the key in less than ten seconds.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to make a habit out of trying to rescue me,” Quinn quips dryly, rubbing his freed wrists in an absentminded way that is, for some inexplicable reason, very distracting to Eliot. 

He drags his eyes away from the sight of Quinn’s bare wrists and looks Quinn in the eye. “I know you had it handled. Just figured it’d be faster with both of us.”

Quinn looks at him for a long moment, his expression unreadable and his scent too faint to give anything away, and then nods. 

It’s only later when they’ve arrived at the airport and settled down near their gate, waiting for their flight to start boarding, that Quinn asks in a quiet voice, pitched carefully so that nobody else will eavesdrop, “Why me?”

The answer to that question is both simple and complicated. Eliot goes with the simple version. “Because you’re good at what you do.”

The complicated version goes something like this: _every time I squeeze a slice of lime or bite into grapefruit I remember you; every time I see somebody wearing midnight blue under their suit jacket my ribs ache; watching you get out of my car was harder than it should’ve been; nobody’s ever impressed me the way you did, when you smiled down at me after knocking me onto my ass_.

Quinn doesn’t answer, but his fingertips idly trace the edges of his boarding pass, his gaze fixed somewhere on the floor in front of him. It’s easy to read the unspoken question there.

Eliot answers by saying, “The only special thing about you is that you managed to kick my ass more than most people. The rest of it is irrelevant.”

“Irrelevant, huh.” Quinn’s gaze lifts, slanting towards Eliot as a smirk unfolds on his face. 

“You’ll get the job done,” Eliot says. “That’s all that matters.”

The fact that Quinn is an omega doesn’t really matter. Eliot’s met his fair share of omegas over the past three years. He fought a couple of them; flirted with most of them; slept with a handful of them. None of them made him feel as satisfied as the moment when he walked into that warehouse and laid eyes on Quinn again.

What matters is that Quinn is different, somehow. 

“So,” Quinn says, eyes glinting with mischief, “you’re admitting that I kicked your ass?”

Eliot snorts. “Not as much as I kicked yours.” 

There’s a brief pause before Quinn asks, “Would you have done the same, if you’d known beforehand about me?” 

“Yeah.” There’s no hesitation in his answer. He’s already gone over the idea in his head a dozen times before. “You broke my fucking ribs, asshole.”

Quinn’s smirk softens into a smile that could almost be construed as fond. “Gave you a concussion, too.”

“And that’s why I chose you,” Eliot grumbles half-heartedly. 

The way Quinn smothers a laugh into his hand makes the inside of Eliot’s chest go a little warm. “Guess I’ll put that in my resume. Gave Eliot Spencer broken ribs and a concussion.”

Eliot can’t help the way the corner of his mouth twitches upward. “You’d be surprised at how many people would want to hire you to do an encore of that.”

Quinn hums. “I’d take that job for the right price.”

“Try it.” Eliot raises an eyebrow. “I’d just beat you again.”

They argue like that, casual and in good humor, until it’s time to board their plane. By the time they’re seated and ready for take-off, Eliot is pretty sure they’ve become friends.

-

Quinn checks himself into a half-decent hotel on the other side of Boston from wherever the Leverage team’s usual headquarters are, leaves his go bag, and then goes to the address Eliot gave him, which is a tiny studio apartment on the top floor of a quaint building three blocks away. 

“Safehouse,” Eliot explains when he opens the door. “Each team member has one, just in case.” He pauses. “I’ve only been here twice.”

Entering an alpha’s home territory is something Quinn normally avoids, but Eliot’s explanation eases some of the instinctive need to avoid the place like hell. He trusts his own skills and Eliot enough to know there’s no threat here, and the fact that this isn’t really Eliot’s home is enough for him to step through the doorway.

The place doesn’t smell like Eliot, which helps. In fact, it smells like soy sauce and grilled onions. 

“I didn’t know you cooked,” Quinn says, taking a seat on the stool at the breakfast bar.

“Lots of things you don’t know about me,” Eliot says in a matter-of-fact tone as he goes back to the wok on his stove, where there’s a mix of vegetables and what looks like chicken. The smell is mouth-watering, and so is the view of Eliot with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, hair tied back, his hands deft as they mince the ginger and add it to the wok. 

Quinn hasn’t really considered the fact until now, given that he was too busy antagonizing Eliot for it to register three years ago, but now that he’s no longer trying to break Eliot’s face in, he can appreciate that it’s an attractive one. Strikingly blue eyes, faint laugh lines that crinkle when he smiles, sharp jawline. He’s well built, too; broad shoulders and thick biceps, carefully controlled power nestled in a solid body.

And he smells good, even if Quinn would never admit it out loud. Eliot’s scent is all earthy undertones with a hint of spice, and something about it has Quinn’s constant high alert quieting down just a little. Quinn’s had to put up with all kinds of alphas’ scents over the years, but he’s never found one _relaxing_ before.

“That’s a lot of stir-fry,” Quinn comments as Eliot keeps adding more ingredients, despite the fact that he’s already filled three Tupperware containers with it. 

“For the rest of the team.” There’s a bittersweet note to Eliot’s voice that bleeds its way into his scent. “They ain’t that good at feeding themselves.”

Quinn wonders if this is an Eliot thing or an alpha thing. The whole need to take care of people. To protect them and provide for them. Maybe it’s useless to try to divide the two, when being an alpha is intrinsically linked to who Eliot is as a person. It’s simply part of who he is. Eliot is an excellent hitter. He’s a pretty skilled cook. He wants to take care of his team. He also happens to be an alpha.

If Eliot had been a beta, though. Would he have left Quinn at the hangar? 

Theoretical musings don’t help anybody, but Quinn can’t help but think about it. Can’t help but wonder about Eliot Spencer.

“We’re going straight to our temporary headquarters after this,” Eliot informs him as he sets a dish of stir fry with a side of jasmine rice in front of him. “So eat up.”

Quinn digs in without hesitation, then has to stifle a groan of appreciation. “Shit, this is the best post-flight meal I’ve ever had.”

There’s no mistaking the satisfaction in Eliot’s eyes, or the soft bloom of honeyed amber in his scent. Quinn wonders how Eliot can function as a thief when his scent is so damn honest. It makes Quinn glad that nobody can smell his scent. He’d hate to give away his emotions so easily.

But he’s glad he can smell Eliot. It’s reassuring to know his general mood, just in case things go downhill. 

The fact that it smells so soothing is just a bonus.

-

Throughout the entire duration of the job, a wordless kind of worry starts growing in Eliot’s gut. He thought it was a fluke, but it becomes quickly apparent that he can smell Quinn’s scent even when they’re standing three feet apart from each other. He’d blame it on Quinn’s subpar scent blockers, except nobody else seems to notice that Quinn’s an omega at all.

To be fair, the rest of the team wouldn’t be able to smell Quinn anyway—Parker might; she has a very good nose for a beta—but they’ve brought in Maggie, who should be able to recognize a fellow omega’s scent easily enough, and they have Chaos, who is the pinnacle of annoying, entitled alpha. And he doesn’t seem to have noticed the sharp tang of citrus and the subdued undertone of cedarwood that follows Quinn wherever he goes. 

Which means that Eliot is the only one who can actually smell Quinn’s scent.

It’s not a problem, not exactly, but he doesn’t know _why_ he can sense the slightly sour note in Quinn’s scent during interactions with Chaos when nobody else can. He doesn’t understand how it’s possible that he’s the only person here who can tell when Quinn’s scent turns just the slightest bit sweeter with mirth when he witnesses Archie taser Chaos into unconsciousness. Eliot has a pretty good nose, sure, but not good enough to explain _this_. There’s no logical or sensible explanation for why Eliot can smell Quinn despite the scent blockers that seem to be working like a charm on everybody else.

“You’re acting weird,” Parker comments from where she’s snuck up behind him again. Eliot carefully doesn’t jump out of his skin. “Why are you extra grumpy? Is it because you don’t like Hardison’s replacement guy?”

“I don’t think any of us like that guy,” Eliot says. Which is true, but also maybe not the entire truth. Eliot would rather die than admit that he wants to throw Chaos off a cliff every time he so much as looks at Quinn. He doesn’t want to be _that_ kind of alpha. Quinn could kill Chaos with both hands cuffed behind his back. Quinn doesn’t need Eliot defending his honor or whatever kind of stupid thing his alpha instincts want to do. Quinn would probably kill Eliot for it.

Parker makes a dissatisfied sound, then takes a good sniff of Eliot. “You smell more than usual.”

He does? “No I don’t.”

“You do!” She takes another sniff, leaning into his personal space. “And you smell a little different. More like those spices you used to make us chai last time.”

Eliot knows that everybody registers other people’s scents differently. He had one person describe his scent as something close to freshly ground coffee and vanilla. Another person told him he smelled like leather and rain. Parker’s told him, several times, that he smells a bit like a bakery. Which means that the addition of spices is probably his irritation bleeding out into his scent. Shit.

He usually keeps a pretty tight rein on his scent, mostly to seem less like a threat or a challenge, and he’s pretty good at keeping his emotions under control, too. You can’t really get the drop on a guy if you’re leaking your scent everywhere. Some alphas love to ooze aggression wherever they go, but Eliot’s always preferred to keep it subtle. Take enemies by surprise. He’s used scent blockers for plenty of jobs before, too.

But apparently he isn’t being subtle enough, if Parker can smell the difference this easily. He hopes like hell Quinn hasn’t noticed.

“I don’t like having somebody else do my job,” Eliot grumbles, hoping this will be enough to sate Parker’s curiosity. 

Parker finally leans away from him, tilting her head quizzically, then turning to look at Quinn, who is chatting casually with Sophie. “He’s good, though. He’s getting the job done.” She looks back at Eliot with a frown. “And you like him. You always stay really close to each other and you never get annoyed about it.”

Eliot tamps down on his panic as best as he can, preventing his scent from giving away the alarm bells ringing in his head. “He’s—we’re friends. Kind of.”

“Hmm.” Parker looks back at Quinn again, and Eliot follows her gaze to see Chaos step up beside Quinn, clearly angling to hit on Sophie. His shoulder nearly brushes Quinn’s, and Eliot can’t help the way his fingers twitch with the need to go punch Chaos in his smug face. “Oh.” Parker inhales. Blinks. “You don’t like other people getting too close to him.”

“It’s not like that,” Eliot says, but Parker’s already looking at him with a look that she usually reserves for when she’s broken into the latest Glenn Reeder safe on the market. 

“You want to have sex with him,” she says in a conclusive tone. Eliot can only be grateful that she’s keeping her voice low enough for other people to not hear this. “But we’re working right now, so you can’t. That’s why you’re being so weird.” She frowns. “Is this an unresolved sexual tension thing? I heard Sophie and Maggie talk about that earlier.”

“I’m not having this conversation with you.” Eliot feels a headache coming on. He hates it when Parker figures him out when he’s still struggling to admit the truth. “You can ask Hardison what it means, but leave the whole thing about me out of it.”

Parker makes an unimpressed face. “Okay.” She pokes him in the chest. “Stop being weird. You can have sex tomorrow after the job ends.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Eliot says, but she’s already walking away, making a beeline for Hardison, who is about to be ambushed with a very interesting question. Any other time, Eliot would find that hilarious. Right now, he’s just tired. And relieved. At least Parker thinks this is just a sexual thing.

Eliot really hopes that’s all it is.

-

Quinn knows that Eliot is attracted to him. It’s pretty hard to miss the way Eliot constantly leans into his personal space, the way his scent gets a little heavier when he’s in Quinn’s orbit. The way there’s a sharp hint of irritated cardamom lingering around him whenever Quinn comes back from an annoying interaction with Chaos, just subtle enough that Quinn only catches it because Eliot seems to forget to keep any semblance of distance between them.

Nobody else seems to notice what’s going on; Eliot’s scent is carefully devoid of anything resembling arousal or attraction, and he holds it back well enough that most people can’t even smell him without getting very close. Not to mention that everybody is too focused on the job to care.

Quinn cares. Mostly because he’s a little bit attracted to Eliot, too.

It’s nothing complicated. Eliot happens to be attractive, and Quinn happens to like and respect him as a person. He’s fairly certain Eliot would be good in bed, too. So yes, he wants to have sex with Eliot Spencer.

The problem: he isn’t sure if Eliot is attracted to Quinn himself or if he’s attracted to the omega part of Quinn. Which sounds like a ridiculous technicality, because being an omega is inseparable from who he is anyway, but it’s still an important distinction. If Eliot wants to sleep with Quinn, that’s fine. Quinn is more than okay with that. But if Eliot wants to have the kind of sex that alphas typically have with omegas, the kind of sex that would require Quinn to go off his scent blockers or suppressants, then he’s out of luck. Quinn doesn’t do that. Doesn’t do the whole thing where he lets his instincts completely take over, leaving him vulnerable. Doesn’t let himself be claimed by anybody else. Not like that.

And that’s why Quinn isn’t sure if he’d say yes, if Eliot asked. Even if Eliot were to say that the whole omega thing doesn’t matter to him, even though Eliot’s already been clear that he knows Quinn is his own competent person regardless of his biology, he still remembers waking up handcuffed in a car rather than in an airport hangar. He remembers that Eliot wanted to help him, purely because Quinn was an omega.

Quinn has met too many alphas who wanted him just for that. He doesn’t want to find out if Eliot would be one of them, too.

So when Eliot shakes his hand and thanks him for a job well done, Quinn asks, “You ever been to Florence?”

“Yeah, a couple times.” Eliot scrunches his brow, looking a little confused. “Why?”

“Catching a plane out there tonight.” He keeps his tone casual, just this side of carefree. “Was wondering if you had any recommendations for places to eat, given your whole Iron Chef thing.”

Eliot’s scent goes a little muted, like he’s consciously tamped down on it. His expression stays the same. “Florence, huh? Yeah, I can name a few places.”

Quinn carefully strangles and buries the urge to invite Eliot to come with him. “You can text them to me.”

He writes his number down on a napkin and gives it to Eliot, who takes it with an unreadable expression on his face. His scent doesn’t give anything away, either. “You gonna call in that favor when you get in trouble with the mafia?”

“I’ll need something a lot bigger than the mafia to actually need your help,” Quinn says, grinning.

Eliot huffs. “Right.” He grabs a scrap of paper and writes his own number on it, then offers it to Quinn. “You’ll need that if you want to call it in.”

Quinn’s fingertips brush Eliot’s as he takes the piece of paper, and it’s harder than he expected to pull away from the contact. Even harder to say, “I’ll see you around.”

Hardest of all: turning his back on Eliot and walking away.

-

It’s been two months since the dam job when Eliot gets the call. He’s fast asleep in the bed of his still-new apartment in Portland when his phone starts ringing on the nightstand, making him wake up with a groan. His bedside alarm clock says it’s barely five minutes past 3 AM. He grumbles under his breath and picks up his phone to check the caller ID. All sleepiness evaporates and he answers the call. “Quinn?”

“How fast can you make it to Detroit?” Quinn asks. He doesn’t sound distressed, but he doesn’t sound relaxed, either. Eliot can hear the faint sound of Quinn breathing in a measured pattern. A very purposefully measured pattern, like he’s trying to keep everything under control. 

“Six hours, give or take,” Eliot says, already shoving himself out of bed. 

“Not bad.” Quinn breathes some more. In and out. His voice is cautious when he says, “I was thinking about calling in that favor.”

Eliot grabs his go bag from the bottom of the closet and tosses it onto the bed. “Yeah, I figured.”

“You might wanna say no,” Quinn says, and that has Eliot pausing. 

“What exactly do you need?”

Quinn is quiet for a moment, long enough for Eliot to think he’s about to hang up, but then he hears Quinn exhale a shuddery breath. “I was dosed with dextroamphetamine.”

That’s a stimulant. The kind usually favored by gangbangers when they want to be creative about how to hurt somebody. But if Quinn’s calling him right now, he’s not being held captive, which means he’s not in immediate danger. There’s nothing dangerous about dextroamphetamine unless you’re allergic to it or you take too much of it, and neither seems like the case right now.

There’s nothing dangerous about it…but it can negate the effects of other drugs, too.

Like heat suppressants.

“Shit,” Eliot hisses. “Quinn, are you—?”

“Not quite starting up yet, but I’ll definitely be in a bad state by tomorrow afternoon,” Quinn says, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. “They just had to drug me when I was one day away. And suppressants won’t work now until the whole thing is over.” He hesitates. “It’s gonna be bad. I haven’t gone into heat in eight years.”

Eliot’s heard the stories. Going into heat after a couple years without it can be incredibly stressful. Eight years is going to be hell. To the point where trying to go through it without an alpha’s help would be torture.

“I’ll be there as fast as I can,” Eliot says.

Quinn huffs a weak laugh. “You don’t have to, if you’d rather sit this one out.”

“You got anybody else you’d rather call?” The question is met with silence. Eliot snorts. “Thought so. Give me an address and I’ll be there.”

The address Quinn gives him leads to a riverfront high rise apartment building forty minutes away from the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. Eliot gets there just after 10 AM, duffle bag slung over his shoulder, slightly jittery from nerves.

He’d quizzed Quinn on the basics—yes, there were enough food and drinks to last at least two weeks; yes, Quinn was on birth control; yes, the drugs had worn off and Quinn was very much giving consent to having Eliot come over and fuck him senseless—and then told him to get some sleep while Eliot got on the first flight to Detroit. And then he’d spent the next six hours wondering just what the fuck he got himself into.

Eliot’s taken care of omegas in heat before. He likes it. He’s good at it, too. But he’s never had to deal with an omega who has to catch up on an eight-year gap of no heats. He’s never had to deal with _Quinn_ in a heat.

And fuck, this might be a problem, because Eliot’s done some research in the past couple months, trying to find out if there might be a reasonable explanation for why he can smell Quinn even when others can’t, and the only feasible answer he found was the rare possibility of innate compatibility. Alphas and omegas that are instinctively, keenly attuned to each other to the point where they can smell each other better than anybody else can, even from their very first meeting. Attraction that can be immediate and strong and unforgettable.

Eliot doesn’t believe in soulmates or that kind of crap. He doesn’t. But he can’t deny that his attraction to Quinn is visceral and fierce. It’s why he’s here, even when this might be a terrible idea. Because he wants Quinn. Because the idea of Quinn suffering alone makes his stomach twist and the idea of anybody else by Quinn’s side during his heat makes Eliot want to snarl. 

Most importantly, he’s here because Quinn trusted him enough to ask Eliot for help when he’d be at his most vulnerable. 

So he knocks on Quinn’s apartment door on the sixth floor, pushing away the mess of his thoughts and desires and confusion. This is about Quinn. He’s here to take care of Quinn, and that’s all that matters. Everything else, for now, is irrelevant.

When Quinn opens the door, Eliot freezes.

He’s always known that Quinn smells good, but _fuck_ , he smells like an orchard in the summer, like sugar-drenched lemonade and fresh-cut wood, sharp and sweet and perfect. The scent is almost overwhelming, making his brain short out for a second, his feet glued to the floor as he stares at Quinn. He takes in the curls that aren’t tied back for once, the midnight blue dressing robe tied tight around him, the bare skin of his collarbones and calves, and then Quinn is dragging him by the wrist inside.

Quinn pulls him in, then pushes him up against the closed door, burrowing his face into the crook of Eliot’s neck, exhaling with a shudder as he holds onto Eliot with trembling hands.

Eliot drops his duffle bag, keeps a careful grip on his sanity, and doesn’t touch Quinn yet. “How bad is it?”

“Doable,” Quinn says, muffled into the fabric of Eliot’s shirt. “Gonna get a lot worse real soon though.”

“Did you eat anything yet?” Eliot asks. 

“Thirty minutes ago.” Quinn breathes in and then makes a contented noise that sounds suspiciously like a purr. “You?”

“Ate on the plane.” He gives in and turns his head just a little to press a kiss to Quinn’s head. Going by the fresh scent of shampoo and the damp curls, Quinn must’ve taken a shower just now. “You ready to tell me what you need?”

Quinn lifts his head and leans in, his lips brushing against Eliot’s as he says, “You, inside me.”

“I can work with that,” Eliot breathes, and then kisses Quinn like he’s been starving for it.

-

By the time they make it to the bedroom, Quinn’s underwear is soaked and his blood is too hot under his skin. 

Everything had been manageable right up until he’d opened the front door. Then everything had started going downhill fast. Eliot’s scent was gasoline and Quinn’s arousal was a goddamn house fire, and it was unfair how Eliot smelled like the safest place on earth—like a cabin hidden in the mountains, a warm meal ready to be served—and _that_ was what made Quinn want Eliot to ruin him until he couldn’t even beg.

“You’re getting worked up too fast,” Eliot mutters as he strips off his clothes in short order while Quinn drapes his dressing robe over the dresser and starts peeling off his soaking briefs. Quinn can smell his own slickness, the desire of his own body to be filled up, and he can’t help but feel a flush of shame at how fucking desperate he smells, which prompts even _more_ slick to leak out of him. In turn, Eliot’s scent burns with ravenous hunger. “Fuck, I can smell how wet you are.”

“And I can smell how much you want to get your cock in me,” Quinn snaps, but there’s no real bite to his words and Eliot knows it.

“Yeah, can’t wait to see what you look like with my cock in you.” Eliot says, stepping into Quinn’s space, crowding against him. He’s gorgeous, all tanned skin and firm muscle, with a thick cock that curves the slightest bit to the right. Just the sight of it and the smell of Eliot’s scent starting to permeate the bedroom has Quinn so wet that he can feel the slick start to trickle down his skin. “Gonna fill you all the way up, sweetheart.”

Eliot slips a hand behind Quinn and palms his ass, then slides three fingers into him.

“Fuck,” Quinn exhales, grabbing onto Eliot’s hip and shoulder as Eliot pumps his fingers in and out at a leisurely pace, stoking the need burning through Quinn’s blood. Quinn hates the wet, squelching noises of Eliot fingering him, hates how filthy it sounds. Hates how it gets him more wet, until he can feel himself dripping with every thrust of Eliot’s fingers, his slick dripping onto the hardwood floor and slowly sliding down the insides of his thighs. 

“God, I can’t wait to fuck you,” Eliot says, his voice low and husky in a way that sends shivers down Quinn’s spine. “Can’t wait to make you feel good.”

Quinn growls at him. “Then what are you waiting for?”

Smirking, Eliot says, “This.”

Then he gets his other hand around Quinn’s cock and pumps it, once, twice, and then Quinn’s coming fast and hard and so unexpectedly that his knees actually give out on him. 

Eliot catches him with a grunt, one arm around Quinn’s waist and the other rubbing a soothing hand over his upper back as Quinn shakes through the orgasm with his forehead pressed against Eliot’s shoulder. 

“What the hell,” Quinn finally says when he gets his breath back. 

“You were too keyed up.” Eliot presses a kiss to the side of Quinn’s neck. “Figured you might need this before I fuck you properly.”

Quinn’s knees come back to him, so he shifts his weight back onto his own feet, steadying himself while Eliot traces idle circles against his hip. The contact makes Quinn aware of his own body and the heat trapped under his skin. He can feel how wet he is, and how badly he wants Eliot’s cock inside him. “You should get on that, then.”

Eliot presses a lingering kiss to his mouth, nipping at Quinn’s lower lip before he pulls away and drags Quinn onto the bed. Quinn ends up on his elbows and knees, which puts his ass into the air. Something he’s normally happy to do for sex, but it feels different when he’s in heat, wet and dripping with his own neediness and putting it on display. Quinn is usually pretty shameless, but right now he feels the embarrassment creeping up his face, which he can mercifully hide from Eliot right now. 

A callused thumb rubs around the slick rim of his hole, making him shiver. He can smell the bite of satisfaction in Eliot’s scent as he says, “No need to be embarrassed, sweetheart. I like the way you look.”

Quinn flushes, realizing that Eliot can smell everything right now. His arousal. His desperation. He hates that scent blockers don’t work when you’re in heat. “Are you just gonna look, or are you planning on fucking me sometime today?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you.” A warm hand smoothes its way up Quinn’s back. The touch grounds him just enough to realize that he’s growing hard again. Fuck, he’d forgotten just how ridiculous refractory periods became during heat. Eliot clearly smells the fresh wave of lust, because he laughs, warm and sweet, and Quinn feels himself relax at the sound of it. “Alright, yeah, no more small talk.”

And then Eliot’s cock is pushing inside of him, thick and hot and almost too much, which is exactly what Quinn needs. The pressure is relentless; he feels so _full_ , like he might come apart at the seams. The sheer relief of it makes Quinn want to sob. 

“You’re so tight.” Eliot’s voice is strained, but his hands are gentle as they run up Quinn’s sides and then come back down to rest at his hips. “Does it hurt?”

Quinn isn’t sure how to explain that it hurts, but in a way that he wants more of. That it hurts because it’s not enough. 

Instead, he says, “I like it when it hurts.”

“Fucking hell,” Eliot mutters, his scent so entrenched with arousal that Quinn could happily drown in it. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

“No dying, more fucking,” Quinn orders, his brain going a little hazy at the edges.

Eliot says something under his breath that Quinn doesn’t quite catch, then starts fucking Quinn in earnest, hard and fast, his fingers digging into Quinn’s hips hard enough to send little frissons of pain-edged pleasure ratcheting up his spine. Eliot’s cock feels so good inside of him; it would probably feel just as good in Quinn’s mouth. He makes a mental note to give Eliot a blowjob during one of his more lucid periods.

Quinn comes once, clenching around Eliot’s cock with a low whine while Eliot swears breathlessly behind him, and after what feels like an eternity, he comes a second time, right when Eliot comes. The sensation of Eliot spilling inside of him has Quinn stifling an embarrassing sound with his fist, because he hadn’t expected it to feel _that_ good. Heats have always been intense for Quinn—it’s partially why he’s avoided having them for so long—but he doesn’t think they’ve ever made him this sensitive before. Maybe it’s the eight-year gap making things even worse. 

Maybe it’s Eliot. 

Quinn isn’t sure which one he wants it to be.

“Look at you,” Eliot murmurs after he’s pulled out of Quinn, watching the mess of slick and come leak out of him, and Quinn feels only a flicker of embarrassment this time. He’s too fucked out to care otherwise. “You’re gorgeous like this.”

And then Eliot fucking _licks_ him. Right there, where he’s slick and messy and sensitive as hell. 

Quinn can’t stop the whine breaking out of his throat as he scrabbles at the bed sheets, swearing at Eliot as he stretches Quinn open with his thumbs and eats him out. Eliot’s tongue is wet and warm and just a tease compared to his cock, but a tease is sometimes the best kind of torture, and Quinn’s trembling all over again, listening to the obscene sounds of Eliot licking the slick and come out of him, easing his tongue inside of Quinn and making him ache for more. 

Eliot eats him out until Quinn comes again, untouched. 

He feels like he’s vibrating out of his skin, his whole body flayed open and turned into an exposed live wire. Eliot rubs his palms over Quinn’s skin until the shaking dies down, and then pulls Quinn up with steady hands, helping him sit upright on the bed.

“You okay?” Eliot asks.

Quinn doesn’t bother answering, and pulls Eliot in for a filthy kiss, tasting the bitterness of come and his own slick on Eliot’s tongue. 

After a long moment of wet, slow kissing, Eliot groans and breaks away. “Okay, before I end up fucking you into the mattress, we should probably eat something while you’re on a downswing.”

“I kinda want to be fucked into the mattress,” Quinn says, grinning.

Eliot rolls his eyes. “After we eat.”

So they wash the stickiness off of them in the shower, making quick work of it because neither of them know how long this downswing will last, and then Quinn pulls on fresh briefs and his robe while Eliot makes do with his boxers. After borrowing an apron that Quinn never really uses, Eliot cooks some pasta for them to eat as they chat, catching up on the past couple months and also discussing what other things they might want to try out for sex. 

It takes forty minutes for Quinn’s scent to thicken, slick starting to leak from his hole as he feels that familiar lust pulse through him again.

“You should have had at least an hour,” Eliot comments, sounding mildly concerned. He’s doing that alpha thing that Quinn usually hates. Looking smug as he watches Quinn eat the food he cooked, heckling Quinn into drinking an entire bottle of electrolytes, and overall cuddling Quinn as he rubs his scent all over him. Unfortunately, Quinn kind of loves that right now, because his heat-addled brain thrives on being taken care of. “If you’re like this on your first day, tomorrow’s gonna be bad.”

Quinn raises an eyebrow at him. “Having second thoughts?”

It’s a joke, but Eliot still scowls like he’s genuinely offended by the idea. Probably because his own brain is heat-addled, in a sense, and his alpha instincts are too protective of Quinn to even think of leaving him. “No, I’m just worried you’re not gonna be able to handle it.”

“You can worry about me later,” Quinn says, because he can feel the incoming tide crashing in fast. He probably has maybe ten minutes or less before he’s completely out of his mind. “I wanna suck you off now.”

That gets Eliot off the couch immediately, his hand tight around Quinn’s wrist as he drags them both into the bedroom. “Fuck, okay.”

Quinn laughs at that. 

He’s never laughed during a heat before. Huh.

-

Quinn’s heat lasts five days. Considering that heats usually last two to three days, it’s a miracle that Quinn’s body manages to endure the whole thing without ending up in the hospital. Doubly so because Quinn’s heat had been _brutal_ on the second and third day. Usually heats go in waves, alternating between periods where the lust takes over completely and when the lust subsides enough for the omega to recover and rest. Quinn’s second day had consisted of such long upswings and such short downswings that they’d both had to eat energy bars for meals and nothing else. Then the third day had literally had a grand total of three fifteen-minute downswings. Eliot had ended up forcing Quinn to drink fluids between rounds of sex while Quinn had been barely coherent.

Which had been the most alarming part of all. Omegas tending to get a little stupid with heat isn’t anything special, but Quinn had barely been able to string three words together on the third day. Partially from exhaustion, but also from his heat wrecking him so hard that he could hardly think straight. Eliot had grown so protective and territorial at that point that he’d actually growled out loud when his own phone rang with a text message from Hardison, asking if everything was okay.

Eliot had texted back with a curt one word answer once he’d regained enough sense to do so.

Thankfully the intensity of the heat had worn off after that, leaving the fourth day to be relatively relaxing. Lazy rounds of sex punctuated by Eliot cooking food for Quinn to eat. Naps where Quinn cuddled into Eliot’s side, seeking body heat. Talking about things they’d done, places they’d been to. Laughing. 

Day five had been mostly lingering remnants of heat, the rampant need for sex dulled away, Quinn’s body recovering from all the strain it had been subjected to over the prior few days. There’d been a slow blowjob and an indulgent hour of Quinn on Eliot’s lap, kissing him, grinding his hips down until they came in their underwear, but otherwise, nothing sexual happened. Eliot had cooked his best meals and spent most of the day curled up with Quinn, letting the physical contact soothe the restlessness in the both of them as the heat finally burned out.

Five days. It’s the best sex Eliot’s ever had.

And now it’s day six, the heat gone, and Eliot’s job is done. It’s time for him to go.

“Try not to get drugged by second rate criminals from now on,” Eliot says, hefting his duffle bag over his shoulder. 

He wants to tell Quinn that he shouldn’t be suppressing his heats for so long, if this is what’s going to happen when he happens to go through one again. That maybe he should be at least letting himself go through one a year. But it’s not Eliot’s place to tell Quinn what to do with his own body.

“Sounds like an achievable career goal to me,” Quinn says, back to his usual breezy tone that Eliot is dreadfully fond of. A corner of Quinn’s mouth quirks up in a smile. “Thanks for doing me a favor.”

Eliot doesn’t tell him that he would’ve still come here if Quinn had asked, favor or not. “It was my pleasure.”

Quinn huffs a laugh at that, exasperated but fond. “Guess you could say that.”

Fuck, Eliot wants to kiss him. Quinn hasn’t taken his scent blockers yet, and he smells like a lazy summer with honeyed citrus on Eliot’s tongue. The idea that this might be the last time he ever smells this scent makes Eliot reluctant to say what he’s been swallowing down for the past few days.

But Quinn deserves to know the truth. 

So he says, “I can smell you.”

Quinn raises an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure you’ve been smelling plenty of me for the past several days.”

“No, I mean.” Fuck, he hopes Quinn doesn’t hate him for this. “Even when you’re on scent blockers. I can still smell you.”

Quinn has gone very, very still. His scent has gone sour, and Eliot knows just how much Quinn would _hate_ the fact that Eliot can smell his emotions like this, which makes it so much worse. 

“Scent blockers don’t work on you?” Quinn asks, and his voice is low. Deadly. 

“They work when it’s other people,” Eliot says, his heart in his throat. He tamps down on his own scent as much as he can. Tries to keep his voice steady and calm. “But I can always smell you. Been like that since we first met.”

There’s a searingly bitter edge to Quinn’s scent now, and Eliot can’t help but tense at the smell of sheer anger. “Is that why you kept getting in my personal space, back on that job?”

Shit, of course Quinn had noticed. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“You told me that it was irrelevant.” Quinn’s voice is as cold and unforgiving as a snowstorm in Alaska. “That you chose me because I’m good at what I do.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Eliot snaps. “The fact that I could smell you doesn’t change any of that.”

Quinn narrows his eyes. “How can you smell me, anyway?”

“I don’t know, I just can.” He hesitates. He doesn’t want to say this out loud, because it’s a terrifying concept, but he doesn’t want to make it seem like he’s hiding this from Quinn, too. “It could be innate compatibility.”

“You mean that bullshit about alpha-omega pairs that are destined to be together?” Quinn scowls at the look on Eliot’s face. “There are a hundred movies out there with that premise, Spencer.” Eliot makes sure not to wince at the use of his last name. “Are you trying to tell me that you want to fuck me is because we’re, what, soulmates?”

He hates the way Quinn says that last word, like it’s something laughable. Something that is impossible, at least between the two of them. “Look, it’s stupid, I know, but I couldn’t find any other reason for your scent blockers to not work on me. I can’t smell anybody else on scent blockers. It’s just—you.”

Quinn is quiet for a moment. Then: “So you think I’m supposed to be yours.”

He wants to say yes. He wants it so badly. He wants Quinn, more than anything he’s ever wanted before.

“I think the whole thing is bullshit,” Eliot says instead. “Biology doesn’t get to fucking decide who we are or who we belong to.”

The bitter tinge to Quinn’s scent fades a little, but it’s still there. Still lingering, tainting the fresh sweetness of citrus. “Well, at least we agree on that.”

Eliot swallows. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“Better late than never, I suppose,” Quinn drawls, crossing his arms, his body language defensive and closed off. Eliot’s chest aches, seeing Quinn’s guarded posture when the bite marks and hickeys on his collarbones and neck that Eliot left are still so visible on his skin. “You can leave, now.”

Eliot lets himself draw one last deep breath, letting Quinn’s scent settle in his lungs, as if he could keep it there. Then he leaves.

-

Quinn doesn’t intend to ever go into heat again. He felt like he barely survived this one. His memories of the third day are hazy at best, and that’s pretty fucking alarming. All he remembers from that day is Eliot inside of him, the scent of oak and amber, the sensations of _too muc_ h and _not enough_ crashing into each other until he broke down into incoherent begging.

He doesn’t want a repeat of that. 

Logically, he knows that if he goes into heat again without waiting another several years it won’t be this drastic, but the very idea of willingly submitting himself to that loss of control goes against all of his instincts. 

Well, his omega instincts want to experience the exquisite pleasure of spending a heat with Eliot Spencer again, but Quinn’s good at ignoring those. It doesn’t matter that the sex was incredible, or that they got along so easily even without the sex, or that Eliot made him feel safer than he’s ever been. What matters is that Eliot’s attraction to Quinn isn’t really attraction to _Quinn_. It’s the omega part of him that Eliot can’t resist, and that thought shouldn’t bother him as much as it does.

There are three possible occasions when scent blockers could be ineffective on specific individuals. First, they don’t work between bonded pairs. Second, there are rare cases of people who are immune to them, meaning that they can still smell people who are on scent blockers. Third, they supposedly have only minimal effects on innately compatible pairs.

Quinn definitely knows the first one’s not applicable to him. Eliot said that he wasn’t in the second category. That leaves option number three.

It’s just a myth, as far as Quinn knows, but it’s a popular one. He’s heard the stories of alphas and omegas that are made for each other. About instant chemistry that runs through your veins and attraction that borders on devotion even at first sight. The ability to recognize each other’s scent even when it shouldn’t be possible. 

Quinn doesn’t believe in soulmates, but nothing else explains the fact that his scent blockers have no effect on Eliot.

Which leaves Quinn with a very uncomfortable possibility that his own attraction to Eliot is something that he can’t fight. And nothing bothers him than having his life dictated by something he can’t fight and win against.

The thing is, he knows that he doesn’t _have_ to fight this. There’s no point in trying to separate the alpha from Eliot or the omega from himself. All attraction is, after all, a biological matter. There isn’t anything wrong with having amazing chemistry with somebody else. He could just go along with it and enjoy the ride. Enjoy the opportunity to claim Eliot as his own.

But Quinn wants to fight it. He doesn’t want to capitulate to his goddamn biology. He wants to make his own choices. 

So when a month passes by and it’s time for his heat to roll around again, he goes to the small studio apartment he keeps in Stuttgart and stocks up on food and drinks, picks up a handful of novels from the nearest bookstore, and prepares to relax for the next three days.

There’s a variety of ways an omega’s heat can go when they’re on suppressants. Some have a groggy, painful time. Some still want sex, sans the burning need and getting excessively wet. Some don’t really feel anything at all. In Quinn’s case, his suppressed heats tend to make him drowsy and a little irritable. He can still function just fine and go on jobs if necessary, but he tends to try to keep his schedule clear for his heats, like little monthly vacations where he can laze around, napping and reading until his focus is sharp and clear again.

That’s not how it goes, this time.

This time, he spends four days trying not to break things because he keeps getting mood swings ranging from mildly anxious to extremely furious, his head hurting like a motherfucker, and feverish as hell. Also, surges of lust burn through him at random intervals, so intense that he nearly feels like he’s actually in heat. He doesn’t get wet, though, which means the suppressants are working. 

He ends up shaking and masturbating through the majority of those three days, exhausted and frustrated and haunted by fever dreams of callused hands on his skin and a low voice in his ear.

It’s probably the aftereffects of his last heat. His body is recalibrating. That’s what Quinn tells himself after the whole ordeal is over. Next month will be better.

It’s not better. 

If anything, it feels _worse_ , which doesn’t make sense at all. He holes up in a safehouse he has in the outskirts of Montreal and spends four days with his head pounding and his hands shaking, feeling flushed with the need for a good, hard fuck. He actually considers going out and finding somebody, anybody, to fuck him. It wouldn’t even need to be an alpha; alphas are the only ones that can really keep up with an omega’s heat, but this isn’t an actual heat, so a beta would work just fine. Hell, Quinn isn’t opposed to having sex with an omega, either.

But the idea of anybody else so much as touching him feels wrong. The only person he could stomach being in the same room with is on the other side of the continent, and Quinn absolutely refuses to break down and beg for help. So he ends up spending his entire heat resisting the overwhelming urge to pick up the phone and say _I need you right now_.

After those four hellish days, Quinn spends an entire week beating up Canadian mobsters. It’s pretty cathartic. 

He knows, though, that he can’t keep this up. His hormones are going to throw a fit every time he denies himself a natural heat. He needs to accept that and go off suppressants at least until his biology has recovered from eight years of being stifled. He needs to have a real heat. Probably multiple times. 

And he can’t do it alone. 

The worst part of it is that even now, even after everything, there’s only one person Quinn trusts enough to take care of him.

So when it’s time for his next heat, Quinn goes to Portland. He can feel the scent blockers slowly wearing off as the heat starts in—two days earlier than he was expecting, which means there’s no time to talk things out first—on his way from the airport to Eliot’s apartment. His cab driver, an omega, sends him a sympathetic look as he pays the fare and grabs his go bag.

There’s no time to second-guess himself by the time he’s standing in front of Eliot’s apartment door in the late afternoon; the heat is coming on too fast. And fuck, maybe he should’ve called beforehand, but it’s too late to regret that now. 

He knocks on Eliot’s door and hopes like hell that he’s home.

The door opens.

“Quinn?” Eliot asks, still looking devastatingly handsome, still smelling like the safest place Quinn could ever be. His blue eyes go a little wide when he inhales. “Shit, why are you—”

“For the record, I’m still not yours,” Quinn breathes, and kisses Eliot as he pushes his way inside.

-

Eliot’s spent three months striving not to obsess over Quinn and failing exactly that, torn between trying to forget just how perfect Quinn laughing into his mouth had felt and trying to carve the memory of Quinn’s body moving against his into stone. He’d pretty much given up on ever getting to touch Quinn again.

But now Quinn is kissing him, hard and desperate, smelling like ripe fruit ready to be bitten into, coated in honey and sugar, and Eliot kisses back hungrily, walking backwards as Quinn kicks the door shut behind them and crowds against him. When they finally break apart, Eliot realizes that Quinn’s just dropped a duffle bag on the floor, and what the implications of that are. This isn’t an impromptu visit; Quinn is here to spend his heat with him, in Eliot’s home.

“You couldn’t have called ahead?” Eliot asks, but he can’t find it in him to be even the slightest bit annoyed. Not when Quinn is _here_ , when he can still taste him on his tongue and his warmth is still lingering on Eliot’s lips. 

“Was planning on talking first, but I started earlier than I should’ve,” Quinn says, already shedding his suit jacket, then tugging his tie loose. “So, change of plans: fuck me first, then we talk.”

It’s a very bad plan. Eliot’s completely on board with it.

They shed their clothes on the way to the bedroom, stealing kisses as they go, bumping into furniture and half-stumbling through the doorway. By the time Eliot’s down to his underwear and Quinn’s unzipping his pants, he can smell that intoxicating scent of Quinn’s slick thickening in the air. Just the scent alone has arousal burning through Eliot. Fuck, he wants to eat Quinn alive.

“You were seriously in public right before this?” he asks, and he can’t help the irritation flickering through him at the idea of anybody getting to smell Quinn in pre-heat, like a dessert just begging to be devoured. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Your cock filling me up,” Quinn says, pulling his underwear off, and Eliot’s brain decides that how Quinn got here isn’t important. What’s important is fucking Quinn into an incoherent wreck until he’s pliant and sated in Eliot’s arms. Helping Quinn drown in the heat and pulling him back out of it.

Quinn shoves Eliot towards the bed, clearly very serious about getting fucked as soon as possible. “I wanna ride you.”

He’s not saying no to _that_. 

Eliot pulls the covers off and climbs onto the mattress, quickly situating himself so that he’s leaning against the headboard with a pillow behind him. Quinn is straddling him in a blink—Eliot forgets how fucking _fast_ Quinn moves sometimes—and positioning Eliot’s cock, licking his lips that are already bruised from how Eliot sucked and nipped at them. And then he’s sinking down onto it without warning in one smooth movement, taking Eliot all the way into the wet, tight heat of his body with a small shuddery sigh of contentment. 

“Missed this,” Quinn murmurs, eyes fluttering shut. Eliot’s not really sure if he’s talking to himself or directing the words at Eliot. Either way, he can’t help but run his hands up Quinn’s thighs, settling at his hips with a possessive grip. “Shit, it feels so good.”

Eliot doesn’t say, _you feel so good, even better than I remembered, I’ve been dreaming about this for months, I’ll take good care of you_. 

Doesn’t say, _I missed you_.

Instead he lets Quinn take what he wants, gives him what he needs. Swallows a groan when Quinn rolls his hips in a slow and tight circle. Grabs onto Quinn and thrusts up, just to see Quinn tilt his head back, baring his throat as he swears breathlessly. Leans forward to scrape his teeth down Quinn’s skin, littering marks across his collarbones and chest. Follows the pace that Quinn sets, starting lazy and then speeding up steadily until he reaches a punishing rhythm, thrusting up to meet Quinn every time he grinds his hips down. 

Quinn looks like sin, haphazard curls escaping his ponytail to frame his boyish face, the muscles of his long limbs flexing as he moves, bare skin a picture of scars and darkening marks left by Eliot, his cock flushed dark and dribbling precome. He smells like sex, his slick dripping down Eliot’s cock to his balls and inner thighs as the wet sounds of Eliot fucking him fill the bedroom. 

Eliot wants this to last forever.

It doesn’t, of course. But Quinn comes twice, clenching hard around Eliot’s cock in a way that makes Eliot’s sanity fray at the edges. Eliot manages to fuck him through both orgasms before he comes, then he takes a moment to breathe before he flips Quinn back onto his back and starts fucking him again.

Quinn comes three more times before Eliot finally gives in and comes inside Quinn once more, filling him up until his hole is overflowing with slick and come, leaking out of him and onto the bed sheets. 

It takes Quinn a full five minutes before he regains the ability to speak. “We should probably talk, now.”

Eliot reluctantly agrees. “Wash up first. We can talk while I make you some food.” 

By the time they’re clean and dressed minimally in underwear, Quinn on a stool while Eliot grills cod fish and preps some more food that he can put in the oven while they have another sex marathon later, Eliot is clearheaded enough to recognize that Quinn isn’t here because he’s had some sudden change of heart. He’s here out of necessity.

Quinn confirms as much as he explains what his past couple heats on suppressants have been like. The alpha part of Eliot feels pissed off and a little distressed at hearing how miserable Quinn’s heats have been, irrationally filled with the want to have been there to look after him. Something in Eliot’s scent must’ve given that away, because Quinn raises an eyebrow at him. 

“I’m gonna need some help with my heats for a while,” Quinn says between bites of cod and vegetables. He sounds casual, but Eliot can see the tension in his shoulders. “And you did a good job last time. So if you’re interested, we could work something out.”

Having this conversation when they’re both under the influence of Quinn’s heat is unfair, because Eliot can’t really say no to Quinn right now. But then again, he knows that Quinn came to Eliot because he doesn’t trust anybody else to get him through this. Even if Quinn is trying his best to not say so, it’s easy to tell that he needs Eliot to say yes, or he’s stuck dealing with his heats by himself. And the alpha instincts in Eliot rebel against the very idea of Quinn suffering alone.

Even without the influence of heat and hormones, Eliot knows his answer will be the same anyway. 

“Yeah, I’m interested,” Eliot says. 

Quinn’s shoulders relax, only a notch. “This thing, it’s just for heats.”

Just a few days a month, just sex and food and the scent of citrus. Just snatches of Quinn’s time and body and trust, stolen and treasured. Nothing that Eliot gets to keep. Nothing he can claim as his own. 

Eliot will take what he can get. “I can live with that.”

-

The rest of the first day goes predictably. There’s the high tides of lust and then the ebbing where Quinn eats Eliot’s food and relaxes into Eliot’s hold as they cuddle. They chat like they’re back on good terms, even if neither of them bring up the issue about Quinn’s scent blockers not working on Eliot. They discuss other topics, like Quinn’s most recent job or what Eliot’s team has been up to. Food they’ve eaten, places they visited, random facts that they’ve learned. It’s not too bad.

The second day is bad. The highs are too intense and too long, his whole body wracked with tremors and desperation that Eliot does his best to chase away with his mouth and hands, easing his cock into Quinn and fucking him with firm, steady thrusts. Quinn doesn’t have the body coordination to do anything but take it, to let Eliot fuck into him and wring orgasm after orgasm out of him, but at least he stays coherent enough to tell Eliot _more_ and _harder_ and _if you don’t come inside me I’ll kill you, I swear_. 

The worst part, though, is how much his body craves physical contact. During sex, it never feels like enough; he clings to Eliot as best as he can, even if his limbs aren’t very cooperative, arching into Eliot’s touch like he’s starving for it. Even during the downswings it’s a problem. Quinn tries to hide it, but his scent is a dead giveaway, turning sour every time Eliot’s touch leaves his skin, and Eliot figures it out quickly from there. So they eat with their sides pressed against each other, cuddle on the couch with the comforting weight of Eliot’s body pressing Quinn’s down into the cushions, and basically stay glued to each other as much as possible. 

Eliot has to get up and go change the bed sheets, at one point, which makes Quinn’s whole body _ache_ , and Eliot must sense his distress, because he finishes the job in record time and then rushes back, rubbing slow circles into Quinn’s skin with his hands, pressing kisses to his jaw and mouth in silent apology. 

The third day is a little better. Quinn regains his motor control for the most part, and the bouts of lust start feeling less painful. His downswings are still too short compared to how long the highs are, according to Eliot, but at least the possibility that Quinn might end up needing medical attention seems less likely by this point. Eliot can take care of the rest, Quinn’s heat-struck brain decides.

He has to admit that Eliot does take very good care of him. He makes sure Quinn is well-fed—and Eliot’s cooking is delicious, so it’s not a hardship to eat whatever Eliot puts in front of him—and hydrated; reads Quinn’s moods and needs instinctively and acts accordingly; smothers Quinn with kisses and cuddles and his scent in a way that makes Quinn’s omega instincts purr in satisfaction, even if he’d rather die than admit it out loud. Plus, Eliot makes him feel safe. Anything that wants to get to Quinn will need to go through Eliot first, and Quinn knows, as natural as breathing, that Eliot will never let anything happen to him. 

Also, Eliot is undeniably, ridiculously, _incredibly_ good in bed. 

He has a filthy mouth that makes Quinn’s whole body burn with need, his breath hot against Quinn’s skin as he says _you look so good when you spread your legs for me_ and _look at how wet you are, how bad you want it, just begging for my cock_ and _god I wanna tie you to the bed and fill you up til you’re crying and the only thing you can say is my name_. His hands are, unsurprisingly, very talented, and can finger Quinn into orgasm without even touching Quinn’s cock. And his stamina is fucking terrific. Eliot can make Quinn come four times before he does—to be fair, Quinn tends to come faster after the first time during heats, because multiple orgasms just work that way, but _still_ —and doesn’t seem to get tired of fucking Quinn, even when they’ve been pretty much had sex for almost the whole day. 

Plus, well. Eliot’s cock is the best thing Quinn’s ever had inside of him. Big and thick and perfect, filling Quinn up just the way he needs. Quinn insists on Eliot leaving it, soft and spent, inside him as they fall asleep. They both wake up early the next morning when Quinn grinds his ass back onto it, and Eliot fucks him like that, spooning him and grinding into him until they both come. 

Starting from there, things start winding down on the fourth day. The downswings become long enough that Eliot feeds Quinn more lavish meals, even coaxing Quinn into taking a lazy bath with him. Then Eliot spends a whole hour just exploring Quinn’s body with his mouth, leaving bite marks and hickeys all over his skin that make Quinn’s chest go warm with satisfaction, even if he’ll never admit it. 

By the fifth day, Quinn’s heat has pretty much worn off, leaving only the faint remains of languid warmth and a shadow of a yearning for Eliot’s touch. 

He decides it’s good enough.

“You sure about this?” Eliot asks, clearly restraining himself from trying to lock Quinn away until all remnants of the heat are entirely gone. “Your scent blockers ain’t gonna work yet.”

Quinn knows that. He knows that it’d be safer to stay an extra day. Easier to let Eliot spoil him just a little longer, the way his omega instincts want right now. But Quinn needs to go, even if it means other people are going to be able to smell him for the next twelve hours. He needs to leave, because he might do something irrevocably stupid if he stays.

“I’m sure.” Quinn shoves his hands into his pockets. “I’ll be fine. It’s not like any random alphas are gonna want to jump me, at this point.”

Eliot makes a sound that could almost be a growl, then immediately winces when Quinn gives him an unimpressed look. “Sorry, didn’t mean to, uh.” He flounders, which is oddly cute and makes something go a little soft in Quinn’s chest. “I know you can handle any alphas trying to jump you just fine.”

“That includes you,” Quinn says dryly, and Eliot’s mouth twitches into a crooked smile. 

“I know.” He hesitates. “Look, if it makes it any easier, I could give you some cover. Y’know, mask your scent with mine instead.”

“You mean, you want to scent me,” Quinn translates.

Eliot flushes. “I know you don’t need it, but if you want, I can do that.”

That sounds like toeing a line that shouldn’t be crossed, too close to claiming each other. Dangerous. But Quinn does want to avoid the hassle of anybody taking any interest in him today. Regardless of the fact that he’s made it his choice to leave before his scent blockers can take effect, he still doesn’t want anybody smelling his scent. Eliot’s offer is just that. Some cover for Quinn to hide behind. 

It doesn’t have to really mean anything, he tells himself. 

“Fine.” He opens his arms and invites Eliot in. “Go ahead.”

Eliot’s scent flares with a fierce kind of satisfaction that sends a shiver down Quinn’s spine. Apparently his brain is still not fully recovered from his heat if he’s enjoying Eliot getting all territorial over him. Nevertheless, he stays still as Eliot moves into his space, pressing open-mouthed kisses to the insides of Quinn’s wrists before he tugs Quinn into a hug, wrapping both arms possessively around Quinn’s waist. He does his best to not lean into the kisses Eliot litters up his neck and jaw, his earthy scent growing thick and heavy as he nuzzles into the side of Quinn’s neck. 

It feels like safety. A little too much like comfort, like something he wants to have for more than a single afternoon.

“Still not yours,” Quinn murmurs, just as a reminder. For whom, he’s not sure.

“I know,” Eliot sighs against his skin. “I know.”

-

Quinn coming over to spend his heats with Eliot becomes a regular thing. Roughly every four weeks, Quinn texts ahead and then shows up on Eliot’s doorstep the next day, his heat-ripe scent starting to seep out of him in a way that never fails to make Eliot want to growl at every alpha who might’ve been in a ten-foot radius of him. Then they spend a few days holed up in Eliot’s apartment, fucking and eating and sleeping until the heat wears off.

Each heat lasts four days. It’s probably because Quinn’s body is still catching up on eight years’ worth of heats, and Quinn hopes that this tapers off into three days, which would be a good sign that he’s stable enough to go back on suppressants. Eliot secretly might not want this to happen, but he’s never going to say that out loud. He doesn’t want Quinn to actually try to murder him.

Quinn leaves on the fifth day, every time. Even when his scent is still bleeding all over the place, he insists on going, and Eliot doesn’t have the right to stop him, even if the alpha part of him desperately wants to keep Quinn locked up in the bedroom for at least another twenty-four hours. So instead, he scents Quinn before he leaves. Every time.

The team finds out soon enough. Not about Quinn, no, because Eliot had made it very clear that _this_ was something off-limits to his team, no matter how curious they were, but they all know Eliot is somebody’s heat-partner. It’s impossible to hide it, given how he’s obviously taking time off from the job for a few days every month. Nate is supportive—understandably so, given that his ex-wife is an omega—and the rest of the team are curious but keep their noses out of it. They know that trying to test an alpha’s protectiveness over their omega is a bad idea.

Not that Quinn is Eliot’s. Quinn reminds him of that constantly, drawing the line between them every time Eliot pushes too far. Only ever visiting Eliot just when his heat strikes and always leaving as it’s still fading away. Never calling Eliot otherwise.

So Eliot makes the most of what he has, like he always does. He learns and prepares Quinn’s favorite foods ahead of time. He buys soft bed sheets and fluffy pillows that Quinn happily burrows into when he’s sleep-soft and lazy. He leaves bruises and hickeys and bite marks all over Quinn’s skin, as if that will make the time spent between them any more permanent. He spoils Quinn, as much as he can get away with while the omega part of Quinn is receptive to the affection and praise and protectiveness. He spends every single minute they have together memorizing Quinn: the way his eyes gleam when he laughs, the map of scars on his skin, the cadence of his voice when he says Eliot’s name while laughing versus the sound of it when he moans Eliot’s name when he’s about to come. 

He does his best to be creative with the sex, too. As Quinn’s heats slowly start to level out, the painful intensity of them decreasing over the months as his body recovers its way back to a healthy equilibrium, Eliot is able to find the space to add more variety to the things they do. Not that it’s completely necessary; old-fashioned fucking is honestly good enough for the both of them, and there’s not a lot of space for anything else at the peaks of Quinn’s heats. But the beginnings and ends when Quinn is still not completely taken over by desperation and desire? Eliot makes those fun.

Well, maybe not as fun for Quinn.

“I hate you so much right now,” Quinn says on one occasion, while Eliot watches him, refusing to touch Quinn until he’s made himself come at least once. Eliot doesn’t mind the words; he can smell Quinn’s embarrassment—it’s cute how Quinn is absolutely shameless except for when it comes to how wet he gets during heat—as Quinn sits across from him on the bed, leaning up against the headboard as he fucks himself on his own fingers, leaking slick all over the bed sheets and moaning in short, stuttering exhales. Eliot waits and watches until Quinn comes, splattering come over his stomach and dripping even more slick from his hole. Then he rewards Quinn by fucking him hard enough that Quinn walks with a limp for the rest of the day.

“You fucking bastard,” Quinn growls another time, clutching the headboard with white-knuckled hands as he trembles on his knees. Eliot laughs from where he’s kneeling behind him, rubbing the length of his cock back and forth against the wet opening of Quinn’s hole, teasing him as he fucks the tightly clenched insides of Quinn’s thighs instead. Quinn curses at him until he breaks down into breathless begging, desperate after nearly an hour of Eliot not penetrating him. By then, Quinn’s slick is leaking down the insides of his thighs onto the bed sheets and Eliot’s cock is drenched with it, so it’s easy to slide right into him, and satisfying as hell to see Quinn come just from that. Even better when he makes Quinn come three more times, until he begs Eliot to stop.

“I should’ve known you’d be into this, you kinky fuck,” Quinn says some other day, half-teasing and half-exasperated, when Eliot handcuffs him to the bed. Eliot sucks him off for a good half an hour, making Quinn come with a guttural moan, then fucks him so slow that he’s straining against the cuffs, reduced to short, shuddering whimpers and choked groans as Eliot draws it out until Quinn finally comes untouched with a low whine. The cuffs leave red marks on Quinn’s wrists that still remain by the time he leaves, which gives Eliot a sense of satisfaction so deep that he’s smiling even after Quinn’s gone.

Every time after Quinn leaves, Eliot takes a couple hours to settle back into himself, breathing in the lingering scent of citrus and cedarwood, chasing the taste of Quinn’s mouth on his tongue, soothing the alpha part of him until he’s ready to admit that this isn’t something he can keep. Then he opens the windows and airs the place out. Cleans the bedroom and the kitchen. Returns to his normal life, goes back to his team, and pretends he isn’t counting down the days until he gets to kiss Quinn again.

Sometimes he wonders if Quinn ever misses him, between heats, during the days when they’re living their own lives and cut off from each other. He wonders if he’s the only one keenly feeling the absence. Sometimes he thinks he’s not the only one. That he’s not imagining the sharp note of sweetness that flares in Quinn’s scent every time Eliot opens his door to welcome him in. 

But Quinn is adamant that he doesn’t belong to Eliot, and Eliot understands why. Quinn doesn’t want to have his choices made for him. He doesn’t want them to belong to each other just because it’s mandated by their biology.

Quinn asks him, just the once, while they lay in the dark together. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

Eliot’s answer is simple. “Not really.”

“Why?” Quinn asks, soft and quiet. Already half asleep.

“Because it’s you,” Eliot says very quietly. “Because nobody ever impressed me the way you did, when you smiled at me after knocking me onto my ass.”

It’s the closest he ever comes to admitting just how deep this attraction runs. How sincere his desires are. Eliot’s never been a fan of discussing feelings, but right now, when Quinn is sliding into slumber and unlikely to remember his words the next morning, he feels safe in admitting this much.

He’s proven right the next day, when Quinn prepares to leave the same way he always does. Bright-eyed and smelling honey-sweet and breaking Eliot’s goddamn heart. 

“Not yours,” Quinn reminds him when Eliot finishes scenting him. Just as Eliot presses a lingering kiss to a bare wrist, feeling the flutter of Quinn’s pulse under his lips.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart,” Eliot lies, and lets Quinn go.

-

It’s been nearly a year since he first spent a heat with Eliot when he comes across the article. Quinn is neck-deep in a job in Bolivia that involves a very angry omega client and an alpha who has run off with another omega, taking the family heirlooms along with him. It’s Quinn’s job to bring back the family heirlooms and the alpha. It takes three days and no bloodshed, for once. 

He does have to endure a lot of shouting from both sides for twenty minutes before the omega pays him, but his eardrums have been subjected to much worse. 

But the conversation nags at him, just a little, because he’d heard the alpha whine about how he couldn’t help himself, and the omega had yelled at him about how innate compatibility was not even a remotely good excuse for what he’d done. About how it wasn’t even scientifically proven.

So Quinn, out of boredom and mild curiosity, looks up the subject online.

He narrows the search results to actual research articles, because gossip websites and blog posts are terrible sources, and finds that there aren’t many studies on the topic. Several allude to the possibility of the concept but there aren’t really any conclusive results. There are case studies, but those tend to focus on specific individuals and can’t be generalized, so he skips those, too. 

After a while, he finds a very interesting article. It’s recent; published only two months ago. Quinn reads the abstract, feels his whole sense of gravity go haywire, then reads the entire article. Twice.

Then he gets on a plane to Portland.

It’s only been a week since his last heat, so it feels strange to be going back so soon. He still remembers those four days vividly. The way Eliot had spoiled him rotten, kissing him breathless and feeding him tarts that he’d prepared before Quinn’s arrival. How Quinn had been made to sit on Eliot’s face, letting Eliot lick him out until he’d been a wreck, shaking uncontrollably as he came once, then twice with Eliot’s tongue inside him. Just the memory of it has Quinn squirming a little in his seat, face heating up. The fact that Eliot gets so turned on by how wet Quinn gets, how much he enjoys eating Quinn out, never fails to make Quinn’s cheeks go hot.

And that’s the thing about Eliot. He enjoys making Quinn feel good. Thrives on taking care of Quinn in every way possible. And Quinn has spent heat after heat thinking about what it would be like to give in and keep Eliot. To be Eliot’s.

And every time, he’d shaken off the idea, because—fuck, he doesn’t really have a sensible reason. It’s irrational. He simply couldn’t help himself; couldn’t help but want Eliot to be attracted to Quinn because of who Quinn is, not because of their biology. He wants this to be more than an alpha-omega thing. He wants Eliot to choose Quinn of his own volition. He wants to have feelings for Eliot because it’s _Eliot_ , not because he’s some kind of special alpha his omega self is instinctively attracted to.

He wants Eliot. Just Eliot.

So he knocks on Eliot’s apartment door, his heart in his throat, and feels his entire body shudder when the door opens. Not because he’s in heat, but because even when he’s not in heat, Eliot’s scent smells like safety. Like home. 

And Eliot, looking confused and worried and almost hopeful, says, “This isn’t—you’re not in heat.”

“No, I’m not,” Quinn confirms, and shoves his tablet at Eliot, the screen already on and the article on display. “Read this.”

He makes his way inside, dropping his go bag on the floor next to the couch as he settles in and makes himself comfortable, watching Eliot as he sits down on the other end of the couch and reads the article.

The article that debunks innate compatibility.

Like all research studies, there’s space for error and it’s far from perfectly conclusive, but the science is sound and the results are significant. The study confirms that there is no concrete proof of innate compatibility’s existence, even with pairs that argue that they are innately compatible. For now, the evidence indicates that innate compatibility is more myth than fact.

However.

The study has found an interesting result that may contribute to the myth of innate compatibility: an intense physical encounter with an omega that they’re deeply attracted to can cause an alpha to develop a one-sided bond with them, which would enable them to smell the omega even through scent blockers. Interestingly, the study says, this bond doesn’t form unless the alpha already has a strong emotional attraction to the omega. On the other hand, the same effect is not observed in omegas.

Eliot reads the article, then looks up at Quinn. “But I could already smell you before we had sex.”

Quinn rolls his eyes at him. “Intense physical encounter, Eliot. Describe how we met.”

“What, the fight?” Eliot looks back at the article. “But it says that I already have to be attracted to you first, and it wasn’t like I thought of you like that while you—”

Eliot stops talking. 

Quinn remembers, from a hazy memory he had half-forgotten until he read this article, the soft words Eliot had spoken, fond and heartbreakingly honest. _Nobody ever impressed me the way you did, when you smiled at me after knocking me onto my ass_.

“You’re a masochist,” Quinn says, helplessly fond at the sight of Eliot flushing red and avoiding Quinn’s eyes. “You fell in love with me when I broke your _ribs_.”

Eliot makes a pained, wounded noise that makes Quinn’s chest ache. “I’m not—I didn’t—that’s not what it is.”

Quinn sighs and crawls forward on the couch, halfway onto Eliot’s lap. He knows it’s cheating, but he makes sure he’s close enough that there’s no way for Eliot to miss his scent, the way Quinn knows it will sweeten when he asks, “So, you’re not in love with me?”

“I,” Eliot starts, blue eyes meeting Quinn’s briefly before they look away. He swallows. His voice shakes just the tiniest bit when he says, “It ain’t fair that you’re askin’ me when you know the answer already.”

A sharp kind of relief and effervescent joy bubble up in Quinn’s chest. “I didn’t feel the same for you.” He smells the way Eliot’s scent goes bittersweet at that, and puts a hand to Eliot’s cheek, turning him gently so that he’s facing Quinn. “Eliot, we’re not innately compatible. Do you get what that means?”

“Quinn,” Eliot says, like it hurts to say his name, and Quinn leans in closer, until their lips are brushing.

“It means that this is my choice,” Quinn says, and kisses him.

Fuck, it feels so good to kiss Eliot like this. Without a heat clouding his senses, without the hormones ramping everything up. Like this, he can just taste Eliot, can smell the way his scent turns honeyed and warm, can feel the way Eliot melts into the kiss with a shuddery sigh as Quinn licks into his mouth. It’s just the two of them, sharing warm, wet kisses until Eliot pulls away, his gaze wary as he looks at Quinn.

“So what are you saying?” He sounds cautious. Hopeful. Maybe a little scared, or as scared as Eliot Spencer is capable of letting himself be. “You want this to be more than a heat thing?”

“I’m saying,” Quinn says, and it’s terrifying and exhilarating all at once to say the words aloud, “that I’m yours.”

Eliot’s eyes go wide as his breath catches in his throat.

“Not just the heats. All of me.” Quinn leans his forehead against Eliot’s and exhales shakily. “It’s yours if you want it.”

“I want it,” Eliot says, both hands coming up to cradle Quinn’s jaw, his mouth curving into a smile that makes something tender bloom in Quinn’s chest. “I want you.” 

Quinn can’t help but smile back. “Good.” He presses a chaste kiss to Eliot’s lips. “Still gonna need to work our way up to it, but—probably shouldn’t leave the bond one-sided, yeah?”

Eliot looks at him like he’s everything he’s ever wanted, but he still gives Quinn the out anyway, because that’s the kind of person he is. “You don’t have to.”

“Want to,” Quinn tells him quietly. “I want you, too.”

Eliot laughs, shaky and deliriously happy. The sound of it makes Quinn’s heart squeeze, suddenly too big to be contained by his ribcage. “I’m all yours, sweetheart.”

Quinn kisses Eliot again, swallowing his laughter, which sends a warm flutter through his chest. Eliot pulls him closer, turning so that they’re both curled up together, Quinn’s weight pressing into Eliot’s as they laugh into each other’s mouths, and Quinn feels right at home here, basking in the scent of earth and spice, safe in Eliot’s arms. 

He’s right where he belongs.

**Author's Note:**

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